Arts watch. Classical review.

Pianist Janis Shares Spirit With Lake Forest Symphony

January 12, 1998|By Lawrence Johnson. Special to the Tribune.

One of the longest-established of the myriad regional orchestras serving Chicago's outlying counties is the Lake Forest Symphony. In its 41st season, the orchestra boasts some of the area's top free-lance musicians, and with solid podium leadership in its new music director, David Itkin, the Lake Forest Symphony seems well-equipped to provide the North Shore community with inspired home-grown orchestral concerts for many years to come.

Snagging celebrated pianist Byron Janis for his first Chicago-area appearance in 14 years was certainly a coup for the orchestra from a marketing as well as artistic standpoint. Among those in attendance at the concert Friday night at Barat College's Drake Theater was a camera crew from "20/20," taping the event for a future Barbara Walters interview.

The veteran pianist's 25-year battle with psoriatic arthritis is a testament to the power of the human spirit and a tribute to the 69-year-old musician's tenacity and courage in overcoming his affliction. While Janis' performance of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 23 in A Major, K. 488, was hardly technically faultless--with a few slips and some shaky passagework in the more demanding pages--at his best Janis brought polished elegance and a nimble fluency to the outer movements. The F-minor Andante was expressive, and the Rondo bristled with youthful high spirits.

Janis' encore of Chopin's "Grande Valse Brilliant"--in the alternative version he discovered--was energetic and rhythmically buoyant, albeit rough-hewn in the more florid pages. Yet it was Janis' reading of the Nocturne in D-Flat Major, Opus 27, No. 2, that gave the best playing of the evening, with quiet eloquence and a nuanced poetic grace.

Performing the vast symphonic canvases of Anton Bruckner with an orchestra nearly half the size of the usual forces would seemingly reduce the composer's cathedrals in sound to mere chapels. Yet, while somewhat unorthodox, Itkin's scaled-down performance of Bruckner's "Romantic" Symphony (No. 4) worked well enough on its own terms. The young conductor showed himself an attentive Brucknerian in a spacious yet taut performance, with skillful pacing of Bruckner's long melodic arcs. The reduced forces elicited advantages in the clarifying of textures and brought a chamberlike intimacy to the lighter scoring of the middle movements.